1. Those Who Were Suspicious of Or Against Nicaea: A. Homoiousians

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1. Those Who Were Suspicious of Or Against Nicaea: A. Homoiousians 1 1. Those who were suspicious of or against Nicaea: a. Homoiousians (“of like substance”, “like in all things”) (Ayres, Nicaea, 149ff; Kelly, Creeds, 288; Kelly, Doctrine, 250; Meredith, Cappadocians, 102f) • In reaction to the “blasphemy of Sirmium,” theologians of this orientation met in 358 under the leadership of Basil of Ancyra and produced a document stating categorically that there is a similarity between the Father and the Son. The Son’s ousia is clearly next to the Father’s ousia and not among the ousiai of creatures. However the Son’s and the Father’s substances (ousiai) are not identical, but alike. • Against Arianism, but also uneasy with Nicaea, this large group was troubled by the Nicene term homoousios, thinking that it led to a Sabellianian denial of any distinction between Father and Son. (They clearly suspected pro-Nicene bishop Marcellus of Ancyra of Sabellianism and repeatedly asked western theologians to condemn him.) Ø Against Arianism: Christ is not a creature but Son of the Father, for ‘creator and creature are one thing; Father and Son another’; Ø Against Marcellus: The Son was not simply an ‘energy’ of the Father but ‘a substance (ousia) like the Father’ (Kelly, Doctrine, 250). • Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, George of Laodicea, Basil of Ancyra. The Cappadocians would emerge from this group. b. Homoians (homoios—“like” without any further specification), Anti-Nicaea: • An alliance of Arian theologians emerged following the Council of Sirmium in 357 and had a considerable influence on emperor Constantius. • It rejected all theologies that see commonality of essence between Father and Son. Homoians were willing to talk of the Son being ‘like’ the Father, or ‘like according to the Scriptures’ but all further technical terminology was avoided—although a clear subordination emphasis was understood to be implied by ‘like’’ (Ayres, Nicaea, 138). They would support Heterousisans when pressed. Valens and Ursacius led a western group (cf. Rimini, Ayres, Nicaea, 160 & 170); Acacius of Caesarea and Eudoxius of Antioch later of Constantinople led an eastern group (Cf. Council of Seleucia, Sept. 359, Ayres, Nicaea, 161f). The Emperor Constantius favored the Homoians, hoping that their theology of “the unspecified like” would unite a majority of Christians. • The Niké/Constantinople Creed of 360 was decidedly Homoian and became the official creed of the empire for two decades. c. Heterousians/Anomoeans (anomoios—“unlike”), Anti-Nicaea: • Led by radical homoians Aetius and Eunomius, they argued that the Son was ‘unlike the Father in every respect.’ The Son is not of the same substance (homoousios) nor of a similar substance (homoiousios), but rather of a different substance altogether. The Son is a ‘creature of the uncreated.’ Cf. Kelly, Creeds, 283; Eunomius—Kelly, Doctrine, 249; Ayres, Nicaea, 144f; Zizioulas, ???). • Eunomius and Gregory: cf. Meredith, Cappadocians, 64ff; Zizioulas; cf. Ayres, Early Chr. Lit, 433) • v 2. Pro-Nicaea but against the divinity of the Spirit (Ayres, Early Chr. Lit, 440; Nicaea, 214, 253) a. In the late 370s there emerged a group, mostly of former Homoiousians, named after Macedonius, (Bishop of Constantinople) that accepted the divinity of the Son along Nicene lines, but resisted the move toward recognizing the divinity of the Spirit. b. They were present at the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (381) but withdrew. According to Kelly, the lack of the use of the word homoousios to describe the relation between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son in the creed of Constantinople (381) is due to an attempt to mollify the Macedonians (Kelly, Creeds, 328f). 3. Confusion, controversies and condemnations: a. Athanasius’ predecessor, Alexander, had come to an agreement with the Melitians by which they would be incorporated into a unified Egyptian church. Athanasius didn’t seem happy with that agreement and after his election as bishop of Alexander (328) he “encouraged his supporters to act 2 violently against (them), on occasion barring them from churches, having some arrested, and at least acquiescing in the beating of some…. (He) earned the opprobrium of many eastern bishops and seems to have made little direct attempt to defend himself from the accusations. At some point in the early 330s the Melitians, as part of a campaign to elicit support against Athanasius, found an ally in some of the Eusebians and probably in Eusebius of Nicomedia himself” (Ayres, Nicaea, 103). • Summoned to appear before a council in Tyre (335), attention focused on the charges of his inciting violence, although several of his investigators also opposed him on theological grounds. When his accusers “charged him with interrupting the grain supply from Egypt”, Constantine turned against him. Athanasius was exiled to Trier (Ayres, Nicaea, 102-3). b. Meanwhile, Marcellus was condemned for harboring Sabellian ideas and deposed at a meeting of bishops in Constantinople in 336. c. Following Constantine’s death in 337, “all exiled bishops were allowed to return to their sees, Constantine II writing personally to the Alexandrians about Athanasius…. The civil banishment of these bishops was revoked, but their ecclesiastical, conciliar depositions remained in force. Bishops who wished to ignore the latter frequently chose to take advantage of the former. Participants from all sides in the debate could and did complain to whichever authority best served their purposes. In 338 Athanasius held a council in Alexandria which circulated a dossier directed against his enemies but with little consequence. In 339 imperial soldiers arrived to enforce Constantius’ approval of the Eusebians’ reiteration of Athanasius’ deposition at the council of Antioch (338/9). Athanasius then made his way to Rome, as did Marcellus, who had also been deposed again” (Ayres, Nicaea, 103-4). • It was during his stay in Rome in 339-340, that Athanasius wrote the first of his three Orations Against the Arians. He begins by “presenting Arius as the originator of a new heresy and all later proponents of such a theology as appropriately designated ‘Arians.’ He had referred to his opponents as ‘Arian madmen’ in a 338 letter, but in a letter produced by his Alexandrian council Athanasius began to speak of an Arian conspiracy (Ayres, Nicaea, 107-8). o While Athanasius’ account of Arianism was to be “of considerable importance in the west,” in other areas of the Mediterranean Arius’ ideas were “treated largely as one half of a formal pairing of extremes: ‘orthodoxy’ avoids both Arius and Sabellius” (Cf. Cappadocians. Ayres, Nicaea, 108-9) d. “Athanasius appealed to Julius of Rome in 339/40 by using his strategy of narrating a theological conspiracy of ‘Arians.’ Pope Julius 1 convoked a small council of about 50 bishops in 341, at which Athanasius and Marcellus were pronounced guiltless and readmitted to full communion (Kelly, Creeds, 264; Ayres, Nicaea, 109). e. Pope Julius 1 then sent a letter to ‘those around Eusebius’ announcing his council’s decisions. The letter showed ‘a strong influence of the emerging Athanasian account of ‘Arianism’. In it Julius charges the Eusebians with accepting ‘Arians’ into communion despite their condemnation at Nicaea. Much of the focus in the first half of his long letter is on “the perceived attempt of the Eusebians to ignore or even overturn the decisions and canons of Nicaea. … Relations between Rome and the Eusebians were shaped for many years by Athanasius’ account of events” (Ayres, Nicaea, 109. • Frend, Rise, 529 characterizes Julius’ letter as “outraged complaint in every line” and an extraordinary “claim to speak to his colleagues on the authority of Peter and nothing else.” f. The Dedication Council: (Kelly, Creeds, 263ff; Ayres, Nicaea, 117ff; Frend, Rise, 530ff) In 341 a group of some 90 bishops met in Antioch to dedicate a church whose construction was begun by Emperor Constantine. Here they also discussed Julius’s letter that vindicated Athanasius and Marcellus and that accused them of accommodating Arians. Eusebius of Nicomedia (newly named bishop of Constantinople), Acacius of Caesarea, Asterius and the emperor Constantius were present. Four creed-like statements were produced: • “The first occurs in a letter which begins with a preamble making clear one point that had come to anger the Eusebians: ‘we have not been followers of Arius—how could bishops, such as we, follow a presbyter—nor did we receive any other faith beside that which has been handed down….’ They also assert that they were within their rights to judge the faith of Arius and admit him to communion” (Ayres, Nicaea, 117-8). • The second is a more formal statement of faith and is known as the “Dedication” creed (See Kelly, 3 Creeds, 268-270 for the creed). This creed has a clear anti-Sabellian and anti-Marcellan thrust, seen, for example, in the insistence that, as written in Matthew 28:19, the three names—Father, Son and Holy Spirit— “are not given lightly or idly but signify exactly the particular hypostasis and order and glory of each who are named, so that they are three in hypostasis but one in agreement” (Quoted in Ayres, Nicaea, 118; cf. Kelly, Creeds, 270). o Nicaea itself was not yet so established as a definitive statement of the Christian faith that questions of other creeds supplanting it are warranted. Yet this creed “almost certainly intended to offer a better and clearer affirmation of faith than Nicaea” (Ayres, Nicaea, 119). Ø [On the Nicene Creed immediately being an officially accepted statement of faith and its relationship with the council of Constantinople in 381, see Kelly, Creeds, 313-331, and discussion on Constantinople 381, below] o Missing in it is “Nicaea’s insistence on the Son being from the Father’s ousia: the already contested nature of this theology in 325 can only have been enhanced by controversy over Marcellus” (Ayres, Nicaea, 120).
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